Last Of The Runaways
by Illusive Writings
Summary: Third part in a trilogy. Someone's killing all the remaining Jedi Knights and Master all around the Galaxy, following a devious but steady path. Anakin and the others try to find out who's behind these murders and why he or she is killing everyone, before it's too late and no one is left behind. It's time to stop running away. AU for The Force Unleashed.
1. The Wind Which Blows Before The Rain

_Very important author note: I changed nickname. Still me, still the old The Edge Of Darkness. I was just tired of an eight years old nickname. This ones sounds... better. Thank you for your attention. Have fun now!_

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**Chapter**** 1 - ****The ****Wind ****Which ****Blows ****Before ****The ****Rain**

A storm was coming.

It was in the air, in the Force. I had been feeling that for weeks now. There was something announcing it. A storm was about to blow up, and we could do nothing but wait for it and see what it would bring.

I stood beneath the ivy-covered patio at the Varykino Retreat, facing the lake, cold beer in my hand, thinking about what was going on and waiting for the thick clouds coming from the north to obscure the setting sun and night to fall. Making the kids sleep would be tricky.

After years of thinking about it, roughly two years ago we had decided to move away from Dantooine. Most of the Rebels were now scattered around better equipped bases and small operative cells all around the galaxy. The only "historic" base remaining was the one on Yavin IV, and we were doing fine with that.

But when an accident nearly killed one of the children, we thought we couldn't stay there anymore with them, it wasn't safe for them (for anyone actually) and we went to Naboo. The recent change in government, from a pro-Empire one to a more neutral administration allowed us to move there and settle our little Jedi school in the Naberrie family summer house. And there the kids grew. Some of them, well, most of them were now teenagers, were almost ready to become Jedi Knights, with Luke and Leia leading the group of the most advanced trainees.

We were already discussing about when, where and how let them sustain the Trials.

Well, times goes by quite fast when you're having a good time, but the good times were almost over. I could feel it in my bones, not only in the Force. The incoming storm was both literal and metaphorical. We were about to face something new, something dangerous. The skin in the back of my neck tingled with anticipation and fear.

I admit I longed the feeling of adrenaline rushing in my veins during battle. That was the only thing I missed about being on the field fighting my way back home with my lightsaber. Not that family life was bad, being a teacher was awesome and being the father of four amazing kids was indeed nice, but I was born to be a fighter, I was trained to be a warrior and except for some minor stunts chasing off a bug here and there I didn't do much fighting. My twisted back and always sore shoulder were thankful for that, but my inner jackass wasn't much.

Oh well...

Seemed like destiny had something more for us incoming.

I looked up at the darkening sky and saw a couple of early stars twinkle in front of me, with the reddish light of twilight lit the valley on my right. It didn't feel right.

Normally, a landscape like that would leave me breathless, at loss of words and at peace. Unfortunately, that evening it left me chilling and unsure, a feeling of lacking safety that I doubted it would let me sleep that night. That's how I work, if I don't feel fine about what the Force is telling me, or if I don't understand what it's telling me, like in that occasion, was not able to sleep. I was used to that, but it had been seven years since it had happened last time,

And that was right before we left and roamed the Galaxy to find Jax and bring him back home.

Seven years later, many things had changed.

For instance, as I said, the whole Jedi compartment of the Rebellion was now based on Naboo, back where we belonged. Second, there were more kids. Four more, to be exact. Matt and Jessie, Hilean's younger brother and sister, Willow, Darrick and Lysveet's daughter, and Lennart, the last adjunct to the Skywalker family. Padmè had broke the news the night of Lena's first birthday, leaving me speechless to say the least. And there soon would be a fifth one, since Lysveet was pregnant at the time, so...

We were becoming bigger and bigger by the year. The youngest was was Jessie, barely two years old, but she was already showing signs of a strong connection with the Force. Well, considering who her parents were, that was sure. She was the mascot of the "team", in a way. Hilean, now, fifteen, felt like the well-being of her siblings was her responsibility, which she had taken quite seriously, taking good care of them, since she was one of the older teens, second only to the twins.

They were now eighteen and things were messy with them.

They felt constricted.

I knew how they felt.

They wished they could be normal teens, but they knew the weight of their role and stayed quiet, but both their mother and I knew we couldn't keep them tied at home for long. They needed to be themselves, and forcing them to be someone else wouldn't have worked. It nearly made me turn to the Dark Side, I knew all too well how they felt.

Leia wanted to pursue a polical career, like Padmè. And Organa was ready to take her with him as his assistant, but we felt it was better for her to get a better grip on her Force abilities. She had a terrible temper and when she was frustrated she tended to let her powers slip from her control. Being so close to the Emperor wouldn't do her any good if she couldn't control herself.

On the other hand, Luke strained to prove her worth not only with his saber, as he was a formidable swordmaster, but also at piloting. He had taken that from me, that was sure. Padmè was an amazing pilot, but she lacked the passion for tinkering with engines and ships of any kind. And that was something Luke loved. When he had some spare time he was always working on his bike, an old swoop bike I had scavenged at a yard sale not too far from there when the original owner wanted to get rid of it. I paid it way less than its real worth, put it back together, cleaned it up and gave it to him for his sixteenth birthday.

That was only a month after we had moved to Naboo. He was grumpy as hell because he had to leave his old low-power bike back at Dantooine, and that was the only way to get him back on track with his training. When I drove it off the driveway to the front of the house, where he stood, he was happy as a clam. I had seen him so happy only the day his sister Lena was born. With Lennart he was a little bit upset, because he had broken his leg only six days earlier.

And it was only three months after that accident that had forced us to move away. Since most of the people living on Dantooine had been moved, security had been lowered and one day I was supervising a work in the cargo area of the base, with Lennard in tow, since he was cranky and didn't want to leave me (he was a bit clingy when he was two, three years old). Since security measures were lower than standard, while I was concentrated on the incoming ships, someone bumped one of those small vehicles used in warehouses to move stuff into a pile of boxes. Very heavy boxes. Some of them crashed on Len, and nearly hit me in the process.

I swear I went into panic mode in the span of a second. One moment I could hear Len playing with a small droid his brother had built for him, the next I couldn't hear him anymore.

Fuelled by terror and rage, I moved all the boxes away from him, found him unconscious, pinned by the left shoulder under one of the heaviest ones. When I moved it away from him, the pain woke him again and he started crying like hell. Poor kid. Trying not to hurt him more than necessary, I brought him to the infirmary and left him to the caring expert hands of our favourite trauma surgeon, proceeded to call his mother and then ran down again to the cargo bay and beat the shit out of that asshole that had dared to get distracted while working in a high danger area where he knew perfectly well there was a kid, since he had played with him for a while, not ten minutes before the accident.

I nearly killed him for hurting my son. I was angry as hell. Later, when Len was safe and sound, sleeping in the huge hospital bed that nearly swallowed him, sedated and with his shoulder carefully rebuilt and now in one piece again, someone told me that I was literally springing electricity all around me when they had separated us.

That's how I learned how to use the Force Lightening. I wasn't exactly happy about it, since it was a Sith trademark, but after a while I learned how to use it for something nice: it was great to warm up cold coffee. Nearly instantaneous.

Worked great.

That accident made us question the safety of the younger kids, since there was one incoming at the time, and how the recent changes in security guidelines in the base, we soon decided to get the hell away from Dantooine. Soon after we left, everyone else moved away, and the base was dormant. Ready to be used, but we had agreed to use that base as a decoy in case any agent of the Alliance was caught, he or she could use the abandoned base to gain some time and escape from the Empire without putting the Alliance in danger.

Anyway, I digress. As always.

Truth is, I was looking for something else to think about other than the bad feeling I had and that kept making me shiver as if I was back on Hoth and not in the middle of one of the hottest summers ever recorded on Naboo, with a sweat-drenched t-shirt sticking to my back and the signs of all the time spent outside marking my skin, making it more tan than usual.

I didn't like it at all.

A crow screeched far away in the forest, pulling me out of my stream of consciousness. Rethinking about Lennart accident made me suddenly angry and even more unsure of what to do. That was the worst day of my life, for real, and even after three years, even if I knew Len was fine and barely remembered that day, it still made me mad as hell with myself for not taking better care of him.

That bad feeling was quickly becoming stronger as time passed wasn't good. I took a deep breath and tried to shove it in the back of my mind in order to set back to a normal, relaxed state. Not exactly the easiest thing in the Galaxy, I tell you, but I had become a champion of calming down when stressed, angry or whatever.

I drank what was left of my beer and sighed. It was now warm and the tasted had deteriorated. I shook my head and... well, didn't do much. I was working hard on everything I had my hands on, but that weight was becoming too much. I had to talk about it with someone.

I was standing amidst the gusts of wind that blows before the rain, alone and afraid. I couldn't do much and I had to adapt fast to the new situation.

The sun had almost set completely behind the mountains. It was time to do something.

I threw the bottle in one of the many trashcans in the patio and stretched my back. Yeah, I was ready to talk about this bad feeling and get it out of my system.

"Dad, come in, dinner's ready!" shouted Lennart from the doorway.

I breathed the cooling air and smiled. "I'm coming Lenny, tell mom I'm coming."

A storm was coming and I wanted to be ready to face it.

* * *

_Here we go again! Almost two months after the ending of Red Rain, here come Last Of The Runaways, and as you can see... well, something big is coming. This is just a short prologue to connect Red Rain with this one. Next one will come as soon as I can. Have fun!_


	2. The Warning

**Chapter**** 2 - ****The ****Warning**

I spent half of the dinner trying to have Lennart eating his vegetables and the other half trying to find the right words to talk about my feelings on the Force without causing too much trouble or worrying the other more than needed. I barely touched my own food and at one point I had to chase Jennie down the hallway when she bolted off her seat and ran away because her brother Matt was picking on her. Since I was sitting close to the hallway I ran off chasing the toddler and picked her before she tumbled down the marble floor. She laughed as I tickled her belly on our way to the dining hall and giggled like mad when I put her in her special seat again. I shot a long, meaningful look to Matt, that joined the disapproving stares from his parents, and that stopped him.

The rest of the evening went by just as usual.

Nothing to report.

Usual routine of washing the dishes and evening exercises and we were ready to put the kids in their beds. Older kids and teens were allowed to stay up longer, but the curfew was strict for them too. The only ones allowed to go to sleep when they wanted were Luke and Leia, and sometimes Hilean, because they were the oldest. Most of all, because Luke and Leia were now overage, so ordering them to go to sleep was kind of useless.

Jennie fussed a little bit when it was her turn to go to sleep, but in the end she fell asleep on the couch, with her head on her sister's leg. When she noticed, Hilean picked her up and took her upstairs, before coming back down to the living room. It was still warm, even if the sun had already gone down and there was a light breeze coming down from the mountains. The storm I had predicted was coming closer and closer by the moment, the air was thick with electricity and I wasn't exactly the happiest person on the planet.

Slightly tired from the long day I sagged on one of the couches and sighed.

I was alone in the dark room, some dim light entered from the great windows but it wasn't much. Surely, the room was barely lit enough to let someone walk around without hitting every piece of furniture in the way, but it wasn't absolutely as much as you need to see clearly around you. It was that kind of light that required some spatial awareness to move around.

I took my time to reason on my feelings and how to tell them what I was sensing around myself and in the Force. It wasn't easy to put into words, or even much simpler thoughts, what I thought was going on.

Well, the problem was that I didn't know what was going on. I wasn't used to those feelings of impending dread anymore. Six years and more had passed since the last time I had felt like that, and believe me, those six years without being tortured by any kind of nasty thought were a blessing. I used to eat such atmospheres for breakfast, but even with the Empire doing their shit, and the Rebellion regrouping after a big mess a couple of years before that caused us to lose a lot of our resources and everything else, even the fact that Padmè had major issues with the last pregnancy, life wasn't bad, really. I mean, no way I was all happy and careless living in my castle in the air with nothing to worry about, but it wasn't like I spent my days and nights worrying about stuff like someone trying to kill me, those days were gone.

Or so I though.

They were about to begin again.

I just didn't know yet.

Anyway, that dreadful feeling was a warning. A big fat warning, coming straight to me out of nowhere so I could share it with my friends and family and have them ready, braced and strong enough to fight whatever the fate and the Empire would throw at us.

And they would throw anything they had. Even kitchen sinks, if they would ever run out of ammo. They were known for their extreme measures when cornered, the many massacres and riots ended in bloodshed proved how ruthless they were, when they needed to prove their strenght.

I stretched my back and sagged even deeper on the couch. The soft, thick cushions accomodated my weight and offered some support, and even if that particular couch was comfy as no other in the rest of the house, in that moment it felt like sitting on a rough tree, with the bark digging into my skin. What could I do?

Not much.

I just had to find the right words and spill it. And fast.

Warning everyone about what was coming was the best thing to do.

And the right chance came about ten minutes later, when Luke came looking for me.

"Dad? You in here?" he asked, poking inside the room through the door.

I raised my hand so he could see I was inside, behind the back of the couch. "Yep. Need anything?"

"Yes, I do. I was working on the engine of my bike and I wanted to run a simulation about how it would run if I changed the settings of the fuel injections, but everytime I run the simulation, the software crashes. I can't understand why!" he explained, handing me his battered laptop. That thing was almost as old as he was, but Lysveet had revamped it so well that he never asked for a newer one. He kept working with it for everything, even on Tatooine, where everything was destroyed by sand and dry air, from homework to the engine simulation software we had developed when he was fourteen. And that was the problem.

I took the laptop and set it down in my lap. I looked up and down the variables of the simulation: theoretically, it could work. He had changed the settings of the fuel injector and the carburetor, and something about the battery to accomodate the surge fo power. Yes, theoretically, it could work, but the simulation botched everytime and then the software crashed because Luke had forgot to add a logarithm in the equation to calculate the difference in the fuel surge.

Once I corrected the mistake and run the simulation again. It worked. "There you go. Remember to check the logs, sometimes you forget them."

He rolled his eyes and metaphorically slapped himself for the mistake. "Always those damn logs, I keep forgetting them! Thank you dad, what do you think? Will it work?"

"Let the simulation run, but I think it could work. More fuel in the chamber means more power output, if you change the setting alright. Now, the sim will take a while to end, we'll take a look at it together. But now I need to talk to everyone, can you please gather them in the patio?" I asked him, hoping he wouldn't ask questions.

He looked up at me, a strange look on his face. "What's going on?"

I shook my head. He wasn't stupid, of course he would never refrain himself from asking questions, when he felt something was wrong.

"I'll tell you when the others are here too. Don't worry, I'm not hiding anything."

"You're not doing like the last time, with Jax and everything, when you had your first dream two months before actually acting about it, are you?"

"Nope, I'm not. The feeling is brand new. Now go, so you can satisfy your curiosity." I stood up and handed back the laptop.

"Do I have to worry 'bout it?" he asked from the door.

I nodded. "Yes. Unfortunately, yes. Go, then we'll talk."

Taking a deep breath, I quickly walked towards the corner of the room, where we had stacked our booze, far away from the kid's reach. I took the key out of the small vase on the top of the cabinet. I definitely needed a drink.

I usually preferred my contraband whiskey on the rocks, but I didn't have time to go to the kitchen and get some ice, so I poured a double shot of liquor and downed it in one, hasty gulp. I almost didn't get the taste, but the burning sensation down my throat to my stomach felt good. Darrick knew how to make booze, that was sure. He distilled it in the barn in the backyard, aged it in handmade wooden barrels which I carved, not even knowing what I was doing, placed in the basement and bottled it in plastic gas tanks, because glass bottles were expensive as hell, and yet it was better than most highly prized alcohol I had drunk in my life.

It gave me some more strenght. Nothing more, but it did.

I was ready.

There was a small crowd gathered in the patio. Luke had been fast at doing what I asked him to do. The look on their faces wasn't one I would like to see on my family's faces. Or friends', too. Anyway, I leaned on the stone handrail and faced them, drink in one hand and a stern expression on my face.

"What's going on Anakin?" asked Obi-Wan, breaking the thick silence that surrounded us.

"A lot. I've been having a bad feeling for a while."

He rolled his eyes. "And why didn't you tell us earlier?"

I had a quick answer for that question. I was sure one moment or another that question would come, from him or someone else.

"Because I preferred to think about it for a while longer, I wanted to try and understand what I was feeling. The Force wasn't clear. I'd only realizied it was something big earlier this evening, right before dinner. I just didn't want to tell you in front of the kids."

They looked at each other and nodded. I knew I had done the right thing, waiting loing enough to understand my feelings before informing them.

"Alright, what do you mean with big?" asked Jax. "I mean, Palpatine-is-a-Sith-kind of big or more like hey-something's-wrong-let's-figure-it-out big?"

"More like I-don't-know-yet-but-very-big, I guess. I don't know guys, it's like looking for something in a muddy pond. I can't see anything, I just know there's something under the surface, but I can't see it."

"You've been hearing the drums outside training and meditation again, haven't you?" asked Padmè our of nothing.

Every pair of eyes set on her for a moment, then everyone look at me. I nodded. "Yes, I've been hearing the drums again. They've never been louder, not in years at least." and in normal situation. I heard them very clearly and very loudly everytime Padmè and I made love, but that's a totally different situation.

"Wait dad, what drums?" asked Leia.

Obi-Wan was kind enough to answer for me. I wasn't good with words and I was already over-worried with that warning thing, explaining also that major issue about the drumming in my head. "It's hard to explain Leia, but to make it short, some years ago your father developed a different way to feel the Force around him. Like a drumming, a continuous wardrum pounding in his head. The stronger the drum, the stronger the feeling of the Force. It's been a while since it's been a while since he's been hearing those drums outside meditation, as your mother said."

"You never told us about them!" said Luke.

I shrugged my shoulders. "It never came up. When my perception changed you were too young. Also, it was a slow process that sort of exploded all in a short period of time. And as time passed and you grew up enough to understand, nothing like this happened. I got used to the sound and I never think about it anymore, except now. It's kind of noisy right now."

"Good." said Darrick. "What do we do now?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I don't know how long it will take to realize what's going one. Last time, I had a dream about Jax being chased by Darth Vader, two weeks passed, I had another dream about the whole Inquisitorious chasing him then I spent a sleepless night right there..." I pointed at the chair in the corner of the large veranda. "And until Padmè came up with the easiest and most intelligent idea anyone could have to deal with that thing and..."

"What was that?" asked Jax.

"Asking Obi-Wan to go with him." replied Padmè. "He wasn't sure to go alone, he feared he would do something stupid, so I told him to drag Obi-Wan with him. In the end the twins forced me to go with them. And with wisdom of hindsight, they were damn right to kick me out of the base!"

"Oh well, considering what happened, hell yeah we were right!" added Luke. "What the hell, dad came home and he looked like he'd been run over by a pod!"

"Not a pod, but almost. Damn I was a wreck after that!"

"You're still whining about that shoulder, you still are a wreck!"

"Hey, show some respect for you father Leia!" her mother scolded her.

"Don't worry, she's right. Other than the shoulder, I've got issues with my back, but that goes a long way back and chasing Jax up and down that system isn't related to my back pain."

"Right, I don't need al your medical backlog, but we need to know what to do, in case what Anakin is sensing is really nasty?" continued Jax.

"We wait." said Obi-Wan.

"Master Kenobi, with all the due respect, all the waiting brought the Jedi Order nothing good. We can't just stay here in our cozy shelter waiting for things to happen." started Hilean. Even if she was only fifteen, she was wise beyond her age.

"She's right Obi-Wan." added Aleha. "And not only because she's my daughter."

"No, she's right. We waited and look where we are. No, we need a plan."

"Guys, we don't have to come up with a plan here and now. It's not like we're going to blow up in the next thirty minutes. We've got some time to think about what we can and what we want to do. There's no need to make big plans right now. Got it?" I asked. They nodded. "Good. Now, I've got the booze, and I think that after this kind of news some of you need alchol too. Why don't we settle down, take out the cards and play a couple of rounds of pazaak?"

"Your pazaak face sucks Anakin!" shouted Darrick. "We always take away all your money!"

"And I win it back." said Padmè. "Pazaak face cannot beat years and years of political training."

"Pazaak face versus Politician face?" asked Jax. "You're on Padmè."

And the night ended like that. Nice and easy.

And after that night, we didn't have to wait long.


	3. A View To A Kill

**Chapter**** 3 - ****A ****View ****To ****A ****Kill**

When I said I wouldn't have to wait long to find out what the problem was, well, I wasn't exactly expecting to get to know the root of that mess like less than a week after the big reveal. And most of all, I didn't expect to find it out that way!

I was waiting for the customary dream or vision about, I don't know, whatever was about to strike us like a kick in the groin (which we were partially ready to parry or at least avoid, but you never know) like the Empire finding out where we were hiding, or them planning a massive incursion to the now partially Alliance-controlled Incom factories to seize control of them and cutting our continuous supply or starships and starfighters.

Nope.

The Force had other plans for me. Apparently, giving me dreadful visions, disturbing my dreams, twisting my patience until I almost lost control and leaving me sleep deprived was too clichè now.

Close Circuit videos were much better. Or maybe just a little bit more stylish, I don't know.

Anyway, as always, I digress. Let's go back to the story.

I woke up that morning about an hour earlier than usual. I don't know what woke me, but one moment I was fast asleep, the next I was looking at the bright red digits of the alarm clock signalling it was way early to get out of bed. But I was wide awake and there was no way I could go back to sleep. Slowly I turned around, laying flat on my back and stared up at the ceiling for a long while. "Right... let's see what I can do before the sun rise."

I looked at Padmè, peacefully sleeping on her side facing away from me. For a moment, my mind went back to a very similar situation, about six years earlier, when she was pregnant with Lennart, when I found myself wide awake at night to watch over her, in case something happened. The last couple of months were a true hell, for everyone. Everything that hadn't happened with Lena happened with Lenny. We thought that since both her previous pregnancies went just fine, even this one would just go smooth as a bluemilk run, but we were wrong.

Everything went just fine until she hit the sixth month. Then everything went downhill. One night, she woke up unable to breathe and I had to rush her upstairs to the infirmary. After that, it was a landslide of medical issues that nearly killed them both, until Janu decided Padmè couln't take another high blood pressure spike and decided to anticipate the delivery, doing a c-section, in order to be able to save both of them. With Luke recovering from a broken leg and all the various issues I hadn't slept for a moment in almost four days when he made up his mind and, after asking both my permission and Padmè's, started the procedure.

Sitting outside the OR was excruciating. Everyone was there with me, but... well, it wasn't one of my best moment. Anyway, everything went all good and in the end they both made a full recovery. But after that night when she woke me up because she couldn't breathe, every time I wake in the middle of the night, even if I only have to get a drink because I'm thirsty, I think about that night. And I never miss the opportunity to get out of bed, creep in my youngest son's bedroom to check on him, tuck the covers a little tighter around him and watch him sleep peacefully with his battered bantha plushie clutched in his tiny, chubby hands and feel a deep sense of peace wash over me.

And after that, I always sneak in Lena's room and check on her too, move her blonde curls away from her face and listen to her even breathing while she slept laying flat on her stomach with her arms both tucked beneath the pillow, just like me. And of course, the tour ended with a quick check up on Luke and Leia too. But they were old enough to make those trips short, since I didn't want to be caught outside their room, like that kind of creepy parent that stalks his kid outside their room at night. Nope. I was the cool, Jedi dad, not the creepy one.

And that early morning I couldn't refrain myself from doing that round again. I walked out of our bedroom, glancing at my sleeping wife one last time and thanking the Force she was still alive and healthy at my side. I walked past Luke's room, the door partially open, and heard him snoring lightly. Then it was time for Leia's, which she shared with Hilean: both of them were asleep, wrapped in the thin betsheets to fight off the cool, summer night's breeze entering from the open window, and then Lena's, just to find her wrestling against the pillow she held like an imaginary enemy in her sleep. After that, I slipped in Lennart's room and found him on the verge of consciousness, so I took him out of his bed and cuddled with him for some minutes like I used to do when he was a newborn and needed to be rocked for a long while before he fell asleep on my shoulder. Once he was back in dreamland, reluctantly I laid him back in his bed, tucked the light covers over him and left the room. No wonder I was so over-protective in his regards: we nearly lost him. I nearly lost him and his mother all at once, then again three years later, if that accident in the cargo bay back on Dantooine had happened a minute earlier when he was standing maybe two feet on the right, well, Lenny would no longer be with us.

And that thought killed me every single day. I had a daily reminder, most of all during summer, when he wore loose clothes that allowed the surgical scars to show. It was every parent's nightmare, losing a child. It scared me to death when they were kids, it scares the crap out of me even now that Luke and Leia are all grown up, Lena is sixteen and Lennart fourteen. I don't think it will stop anytime soon, even if my eldest daughter is about to get married. Damn, time flows by so fast... you watch them grow from little tots to full blown adults and, well, one day they're all cuddles and plushie toys and the next they're the head of the Rebel Alliance fighting off the Empire with all their might. I feel old. Like, really old, but let's go back to the story.

I went back to our room just in time to see the first rays of the rising sun filtring through the courtains. I didn't know that was the day bad news were about to come straight through the front door of our house, so I looked at the new, dawning day with hope. I wasn't expecting anything like this. Nothing so bad at least.

I grabbed a clean shirt and a pair of shorts, quickly donned them and wend downstairs, heading straight to the kitchen. Lazily, I prepared some coffee and while waiting for it to be ready, I stretched my back and rotated my left shoulder a couple of times, mobilizing the damaged tissues. The surgery I had undergone hadn't been completely effective and I still had some issues with it, and well, I was simply growing old and that didn't help. A couple of minutes later, I was ready to pour it in my favourite pod racing-themed mug and take it out to the balcony to enjoy it in the cool morning breeze.

That felt good. Rarely I had the time to enjoy a cool, calm early morning all alone with a warm coffee and some time to meditate. Since I wasn't a morning person and considering I had two kids under eight years old, most of my morning consisted in their mother trying to get them ready for their day and getting ourselves ready too. Lena more then Lennart though. She was a miniaturized punk. I was sure that in the span of a decade, we would have our hands full with her behavior. I was sure she was going to be a mess to handle, not like Lennart. He was quiet, shy, introverted, rarely got himself into troubles... the exact opposite of me. He was like his mother, with his dark, curly messy hair and bright, hard to see smile. He was a happy kid, but unfortunately he had taken my messed up nature and the tendency to overthink about stuff. Poor kid.

Being like me is the last thing I'd want for anyone.

Anyway, again, I digress.

It's becoming a bad habit that I definitely need to suppress, I'm sorry.

Where was I? Ah, yeah, the bad news.

It all started a couple of hours later, when we were having our first meditation session, right after breakfast. We had just set all the kids down for their hour of contemplation of the Force when we heard the proximity alert ring through the house. Considering that we were pretty much hiding in plain view, Lysveet had installed some proximity sensors all around the property to alert us in case a ship (or someone on foot) would come close to the house. That way we could always retreat in the "panic room" we had installed beneath the house. We were prepared to hide in case the Empire decided to come and pay a visit. We were also prepared to fight, but we preferred to keep that place all for us. Revealing our presence by killing any Imperial emissary wasn't such a great idea.

I looked up at Obi-Wan and he nodded towards the door. I took the hint and ran to the command center. Lysveet was already there, since it was her own office and general quarter of all digital and informatic related matter she took care of, typing a long string of commands on her keyboard when I arrived. "Who's there?"

"Don't worry, one of ours. It's actually Jane and apparently she managed to arrive here from Yavin carrying Ferus without killing him. Not bad, not bad girl."

"Thank you Lysveet." came the disemboided voice of our favourite pilot through the comlink. "Anakin, we're approaching. Can we land safely? No other ships on the landing pad?"

"I parked them when we last moved out of here. Don't worry, the place is safe." I said. "At least for landing."

"Oh don't worry, it's safe even for your not so much friend Ferus. I managed not to strangle him myself for six hours, I won't kill him on your landing strip."

"Good to know Jane. ETA?"

"Ninety seconds, tops. Meet you at the villa?"

"You stayin'?" asked our beloved hacker. She had a soft spot for the pilot. Being both Corellian and same age, and sort of having gone through the same shit after the Empire came, they had a lot to bond over and they enjoyed each other's company a lot, since seven years before, when Jane Kobb firstly arrived at our doorstep.

"Ferus asked me to get him here. I don't know if my presence is required for what he has to do here with you, but he can't fly a ship even out of the hangar. As long as he stays and needs transportation, I stay."

Well, at least he trusted her long enough to have her take him from Point A to Point B.

"You're more than welcome to stay as long as you wish. We'll have two rooms prepared as soon as you arrive."

A long moment of silence fell through the communication just to be broken as soon as we saw the ship approaching from the tree line, and this time it was Ferus who spoke. "It's not a pleasant visit Anakin, I'm sorry. I don't know if the rooms will be necessary."

I ran a hand on my face. That wasn't good. Ferus was one of our best intel agents, if he asked Jane, one of our best transport pilots to fly him from Yavin IV, where he was usually based, to Naboo, the news he was bringing were bound to be bad. And I really didn't want to deal with his shit.

"We'll see when you get here." I played the card of diplomacy and stalled a little the situation. "You know the way. Make yourself at home when you land."

I said goodbye to Lysveet and ran to the front door just in time to see them walking around the house headed towards me. In the early morning light, I have to admit that Jane was... well, still is, one of the most gorgeous women I had ever seen. Long chesnut hair, deep green eyes, tall and proud, she was the prototype of the strong, confident woman: she knew what she wanted and how to get it. Her police training hardened her even more and was now one of the toughest people I had ever met. In her typical flying attire, simple dark slacks and a plain white t-shirt. A small backpack hung from her shoulder and she carried her leather jacket in one hand, looking as stunning as always. Right behind her, maybe a step or two behind, came Ferus, hands stuck deep in his pants pockets, looking down as if to avoid the frame of the woman ahead of him. He had cut his hair shorter since the last time I had seen him, probably to mask the gray stripes that were beginning to form at the hairline. We had both reached the infamous 40 years mark and both our once fiery dark blonde manes were doomed to succomb to age, but while I had come to terms with it and kept my hair like twenty years before, Ferus was much more self-conscious about it and had ti neatly cropped to a nearly military cut, to hide it. Even on the verge of a galactic war he thought about the way he looked. Oh well, everyone is different.

Anyway, I held the door open for them. Greetings were rushed and I soon followed them inside the villa.

"Lysveet's office is still on the first floor?" asked Ferus.

I nodded. "Yep. Same place." I replied. "Do I have to call the others?"

They looked at each other, something that I had never seen them do, and then nodded. "Yes Anakin, it's bad enough to call everyone."

Without a word, I headed out in the backyard, where the morning meditation session was taking place. All the kids were still down doing their job, but all the others were gathered near the door, as if waiting for me. When I barged out, they looked at me and I saw the worry in their eyes. "Ferus's here. You need to come with me."

"What's he doing here?" asked Leia.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I have no idea, but if he asked Jane to escort him here, it's bad. You take care of the kids here, we'll explain you everything once we know what's going on."

My daughter was about to reply when Hilean stood from the perch she was sitting on and stoppde her. "I'll guard the kids, you can go with them."

Jax gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. "Good girl. Now let's go, if Ferus says it's important, we'd better not have him wait on us."

So we all went to our personal hacker's office and found the other two already there. There was a holo paused on the projector and they were clearly waiting for us to show it. We managed to all fit in the cramped space. "So, what do we have here?" asked Obi-Wan, who had remained silent up to that moment.

"It's bad. This is the last feed I got from one of the squads led by Master Kota last week. I edited part of it because it was a useless sequence of dying stormtroopers, but look what happened one hour into the incursion."

Ferus pressed a button and the holo started playing. The image was blurry and messy, but there was something very very clear: the red flow of a lightsaber wielded by a very skilled swordsman, cutting limbs here and there. I swallowed a lump forming in my throat as I kept watching. The holo was an editing of various CC cameras feed that followed the deeds of this... well, this Sith, considering the color of his sword, through a shipyard over Nar Shaddah. A shipyard that Master Kota had attacked the week before, as Ferus had said, and destroyed. We hadn't heard anything from him of his squad for days after the attack, but a couple of days earlier, Lysveet had intercepted an encrypted message from him, that stated that he was alive but chased by the Empire and that he would contact us as soon as he was free to move around.

Then Ferus got this. And in the end of the video, it showed this Sith fighting hard against Rahm. And throwing him out of the airlock as the whole thing fell through atmosphere to the ground. No wonder Master Kota had taken his own time to report his location, or even if he was simply alive. If we'd have seen that holo before hearing from him, we would have had the perfect example of a view to a kill. But the fate of Master Kota didn't worry me much. He knew how to take care of himself.

I was worried about that Sith. This unknown new Sith that had stricked right at the same time as us. If he was with the Empire, and that was a pretty safe assumption, we were screwed. That meant they knew of our operations and that we possibly had a mole in our organization.

And I bet that was what made Ferus rush here as soon as he had the editing ready. Or probably as soon as he had received it. The guy who had gathered the data and sent it to him was probably dead as we spoke, but what he had sent us was invaluable. That unknown man had warned us of a threat that could have taken weeks or months to openly manifest to us.

A thick silence fell in the room when the holo finished and went back to the beginning in loop. Quickly, Lysveet stopped it and shut the projector off. Even if she had been in our team for nearly eight years, she was still a simple hacker, and practical violence still upset her, greatly. Consider that she was in the middle of her second pregnancy and was on a hormonal rollercoaster, stuff like that wasn't exactly the best for her. I heard her sigh and look away from her work console, and Darrick was quickly at her side, holding her hand to reassure her.

I knew the feeling.

Even if I knew Padmè was well used to the sight of dismemberment (after all, she had married a Jedi whose arm had been severed away right a few days before our wedding), I always felt the urge to protect her from those kind of images. Not to mention that our own children were in the room with us and had seen the whole holo. I looked at them and while Leia tried to mantain a certain composure (she was so much like her mother, in every aspect of her life), Luke was positively green. I bet he was trying not to throw up in that very moment.

On the other hand, when I looked at my wife, she was apparently fine. At least on the surface. The Force was whirlwinding around us, I couldn't exactly pick up the feelings of every one present in the room, but it looked like, to her, this was only ordinary business.

Oh well, she had been through the Naboo Crysis, various assassination attempts, Geonosis and the beginning of the Clone Wars, witnessed some of the most gruesome events of the Clone Wars themselves and then... well, four kids. And me getting beaten to a pulp years before by Inquisitor Dalan's henchmen. And the convalescence from the surgery on my shoulder. Yes, she was definitely used to the sight of blood.

"Alright..." said Aleha at some point, breaking the silence. "What did we just see?"

Ferus shrugged his shoulders. "I wish I knew. A couple of weeks ago Rahm called me ona secure channel that Lysveet created some time ago so we could communicate and informed me he had received order to attack that shipyard with his men."

We all looked at Padmè for a confirm. "Yes, the high hierarchy authorized the attack on that shipyard two weeks ago. I've been notified some hours later."

"Right. He asked for some intel, I gathered around some data and sent them over to him and his squad. He planned a full frontal assault, guerrilla style and I agreed with that. I was expecting a full report after that, instead we've received silence, an encrypted message that contained some rambling, unintelligible words and this. See why I came here as soon as Jane could fly me over?"

Obi-Wan nodded. "Definitely. So... you came here and showed us this. Do you have any idea of whoever this guy might be?"

"A Sith?" proposed Luke.

"He definitely moved and acted like one, but what about their sacred Rule Of Two or whatever Darth Bane called it? Shouldn't it be only Sidious and Vader now?" asked Darrick.

"It should be like this." replied Jax. He was the one who knew this kind of stuff, he had studied the history of the Sith for years, during our teenage. "The Rule Of Two indeed prohibits the Sith to be more than two, a Master and an Apprentice, but, you know, these two already broke so many rules on the book that having a second apprentice is the less important. I mean, they haven't exactly held their Code to such a high level of respect, I wouldn't be too surprised if Sidious decided he needed a new apprentice. After all, Vader's a piece of burnt charcoal slack that can barely move around, as terrifying as he is, he's not such a good fighter. And Anakin here is very much out of his reach... A new, younger apprentice could only do him good, from his point of view."

"Good to know you consider me out of his reach."

"Hey, I mean... you had all your issues and everything, but even I did falter sometimes! Come on, you know what I mean!" I noticed he threw cautious glances at Ferus, who simply stared at lake out of the window. Considering our past and the issue we were discussing, those glances were more than justifiable.

"Yeah, well, we got the point. But what do we do now?"

"Identify him?" said Leia.

"Easier said than done." spoke Ferus, still looking out of the window. "I tried, but the holo is too blurry, and I'm not that good at editing and tweaking this kind of stuff."

"I'm not bad at holo editing." said Leia. "And Artoo can help me, his holo processing unit is way better than this one, dad updated it some time ago and it works wonders. We can try and put something together."

"Like a face or anything useful to identify this guy?" he replied, looking straight at her.

She nodded, a bit unsure on what to do. "Yes... I... I can't promise anything, but at least we might have something to work on."

"Better than scouring the Galaxy from the Core Worlds to the Outer Rim." stated Luke. "That would take centuries. Also, I can help. I'm not bad myself with this stuff and if Lysveet lends us her work station for some time we could..."

"I agree. Luke, Leia, do your best. And even if you can't come up with anything, it's worth a try. Now, Lysveet, can you take an afternoon off?"

She looked up at him and sighed. "If that means I don't have to watch that video, yes, I definitely can take a day off."

"Good. Take it easy for a day. By the way, how are you doing?"

"You mean how I cope with mood swings, unrelenting morning sickness and all these nasty little things that come with having a baby? Ask me something else please, I just saw a video of I don't know how my men dismembered and this Sith guy is a threat to all of us in this room... if you allow me, I'll spend the day outside." with that said, she stood and walked out of the room.

We all looked around and knew what to do. Go back to our business and let the twins work their wonders on that holo footage.

"Alright, let's get down to work. Could any of you call Artoo here?" asked Luke.

"Right away. Take your time. We'll take care of the kids." I told him, referring to the class they should have held in the afternoon with the younger kids, teaching them Form 0 of lightsaber combat.

"Ahem, dad... what about our training?" asked Leia.

I looked at their mother then at Obi-Wan and smiled. "Leia, time to stop with the training and do some real Jedi stuff. Start with find a clear screenshot of this guy, then we'll talk about your Knighthood."

* * *

_Sorry for the delay but life got in the way! The story will take some time to take off, but I need to set the background and give it some tough roots and basis. I'm quite sure it will take about ten chapters, but well, stuff will happen way before that mark. Have fun!_


	4. A Shot In The Dark

_I think I'll start a whole new tradition: the Annual Post-Castle Season Finale Chapter. Because... Seriously... Last year I was freaking out on the couch. Now I'm freaking out in bed, I scared the shit out of my poor cats that were sleeping beside me __because seriously, the noise that came from my mouth wasn't real. It wasn't even a muffled scream. It wasn't just human... Felt more like a damn kiai (martial artists will understand). Way to end an amazing season. Straight in top three of the best cliffha__ngers I've ever seen on TV. That series is just... wow! Seriously. I think I'm gonna take the last scene, change it and store it for the later stages of Last Of The Runways..._

_Seriously... what a run!_

* * *

**Chapter 4 - A Shot In The Dark**

I felt extremely nervous for most part of the morning and it affected everyone's behavior: the kids were unsufferable, unstable and hard to deal with, the teenagers were snappy and the adults were wary of my own presence in the same room. Only Padmè managed to not bother me in any way, but mostly because, being my wife, she knew prefectly well how do deal with me when I was nervous and kept her distance. I hated she had to keep away from me, but even if with the years I had come to possess a self control I couldn't even image I would achieve when I was younger, I was still a bit unstable.

And considering what was going on, I thought it would have been better for everyone if I kept away from the others for some time. Too bad it took me a whole morning to figure it out.

After lunch, I quickly walked out of the kitchen and out in the garden, letting the sun blind me for a moment before I adapted to the bright summer light. I had to do something to get rid of that feeling of nervousness that filled me and made me snap at everything. The heat of the season wasn't exactly helping, such a hot summer was uncommon and I wasn't used to that heat anymore, and I had to act quickly, before I blew off like a pressure cooker.

Quickly running through the daily training timetable, I realised the combat training area would remain unused for a couple of hours. Perfect way to blow off some steam.

But before that, I paid a short visit to Luke and Leia and found them feverishly working on the segment of holo that Ferus had so kindly allowed them to tear apart. Remnants of the quick lunch we had prepared for them were still scattered on the desk, along with bottles of soft drinks and water. The different styles of arraingnment of the remains, you could easily pick where each of them had eaten: Luke's pile of junk was a mess, Leia's was incredibly ordered and perfectly tidy. Her workstation was spotless, not even a single crumb on the wooden desk in front of her.

"Hey you two, how you doing?" I asked, poking in from the door.

Luke was facing away from me and shrugged his shoulders, continuously typing command after command on the computer, but Leia gave me a more complex answer: she sighed in frustration. I saw it in her eyes, they were as frustrated as I was. And the promise to talk about their trials after that day wasn't exactly helping them. It was a big thing to face, they would have been the first Padawans to become Jedi knights in nearly twenty years, it was a huge responsiblity that was planted on their shoulders, also they had to work on that thing, and that meant watching it over and over while ripping it apart. I wasn't exactly envying them.

"Do you need anything? Have you eaten?" stupid question. I had brought up their lunches an hour earlier myself.

Leia nodded. "Yes, but we weren't exactly hungry. Come back in a few hours and maybe we'll have something for you."

"How's it going?" another stupid question, but I was worried about them. It was their first task and I was nervous also for that, not only for the whole new trouble ahead of us.

"Except for the gore, not bad. We managed to find a usable part of holo for image enhancing. Also, Ferus came here a couple of hours ago with the full footage. He downloaded it from the Alliance mainframe from the ship and uploaded it here. It's not much more, but there are additional cameras showing here, and that means additional point of views. If we're lucky enough, one of these points of view will be useful for what we have to do."

"You'd better get used to the gore, it's what we do." I told them.

Leia arched an eyebrow and smirked. "What? Cut people in half and leave them to die if they're not dead already?"

Put in that way, it wasn't more than simple butchering people, but that's what Jedi do. She wasn't wrong. "Only if we have to. Killing people is extreme measure, the lightsaber is meant as a weapon to achieve peace, not to wage war."

The both stopped typing commands on their work station and looked at me with a blank expression that could only mean "_yeah Dad, keep repeating it and maybe you'll convince y__ourself you're right_" then they went back to their work.

Again, they were right. They left me speechless more and more often with the years. Their wisdom, even if still framed by youth, was beyond their age. They knew things weren't the norm as they were, they had been taught that since childhood, but by the time they had reached teenage they sort of jumped the whole phase and became two mini adults. Yeah, sometimes they were whiny and unsufferable, but who wasn't at fourteen, with raging hormones, first crushes and two siblings not yet five?

"Alright, I'll leave you at your work. In case you need or find anything I'm downstairs in the combat room."

"Nervous?" asked Leia.

"Definitely. I need to blow it off one way or another, and I think some solo training will do good."

The twins looked at each other. "Teras kaasi training?"

"You wish! Nope, the moment I'll find a pratictioner to teach us more advanced techniques, I'll start doing it again, but they are sort of keen on killing Jedi on sight so... I think I'll work a little bit with the bag."

And working with the bag for me, meant destroying it. Blow after blow, I had the bad habit to tear apart punching sacks since I was a teenager. It hadn't happened in years, but you never know... I hadn't been that nervous in... well, ages and I didn't really know if the thick fake leather bag of sand could endure a barrage of right hooks, my secret weapon in case of close quarter combat, without weapons. I was pretty good with kicks too, but I preferred good old boxing to fancy acrobatic combat styles. Acrobatic stunts were better for lightsaber combat, in my opinion. For everything else, I was more inclined to brutal efficiency. Years earlier I had started a sort of self taught path of Teras Kaasi, a martial art developed to precisely fight against the Jedi and their lightsabers, and it felt good, it was a nice way to work out both body and mind, but our knowledge was limited and after a while I learned everything from what we had and even if I wanted to go on that path, it wasn't possible. Anyway...

I went straight to the large area we had built from a large hall at the first underground level of the villa, once used for food and wine storage, and relished in the sudden climate change. Being underground, the temperature of the whole area was pretty stable through the year, a nice constant that allowed us to workout in summer without sweating our guts out and in winter without becoming Force Sensitive popsicles.

That place was so much different from all the various gyms and training areas I had seen in my life: it felt... homey. Not only because that place had been my home for three years now, but also because it really had a certain vibe, something different and calming.

I turned on the lights and for a moment my retinas exploded at the sudden brightness.

I didn't really want to stay there, but as a teacher that day I was pretty useless. My kids were working their ass off in their first true assignment and they were doing it because none of us adults could actually work on holo-manipulation good enough to even make up how to softwares worked and anyone else was upstairs doing their jobs while I was six yards underground beating a harmless punching sack that did nothing to me except hanging from the domed ceiling right in front of me.

It was a shot in the dark. What Luke and Leia were doing.

A blind shot.

Like being in complete, utter blackness and trying to push a cartridge into the barrel of another gun. Pretty much impossible even for the best marksman of any army of any planet.

And my kids had the responsibility of finding the identity of that Sith.

With no clear shot of his face.

I didn't envy them. At all.

But there was so little we could do to help them, except taking care of their daily chores while they did our job. With only Artoo as support.

I felt so bad in that moment...

It was awful.

The more I beat the sack, the worse I felt.

I felt worse because the more I stayed down there, the more time I took away from looking for that new unknown enemy. But I was too nervous and agitated to help them.

I punched the sack with a powerful left hook that hurt my hand and wrist.

For a moment, I thought I had sprained my wrist, even with the protective gear I was wearing. I shook it a couple of times and it turned out it was just a minor pain that went away in a moment, and I resumed my brutal boxing session.

After a good half hour of savage beat up I took a break and looked down at my hands: my left knuckles were all scraped and the skin was bright red, and the protective glove was all brittle and damaged, while the right one, being synthetic, was all good and everything. I wasn't even breathing hard.

"Need someone to hold the sack?"

I turned around and saw Ferus on the doorstep. Our relationship had cooled down during the yeras, and while I couldn't yet consider him a friend like we used to, but at least we weren't at each other's throat every day and every moment of our lives. Much changed after he witnessed what kind of pain I had to go through when Lennart was born and when he was nearly killed in that accident in the cargo bay. He stopped being so acid and cold towards me the moment he saw me running towards the infirmary with my screaming and mangled son in my arms. The look of utter terror on my face must have scared him, because his attitude changed in that moment.

"Nah... I think I'm done. Don't want to break my healthy hand. Just needed to vent out some nervousness."

"Hey, I hear ya. It must be terrible, being unable to do anything until your kids come up with something."

"If they come up with something. They're good, but they're not omnipotent."

"It's a shot in the dark, I get it, but if they can find anything, maybe we can stop this threat before it strikes us."

I chuckled and wiped the sweat from my neck with a towel. "You know, I while ago, I thought the same. That this is a shot in the dark. And that we have to be so precise it makes it impossible to make that shot count."

He sat on the benchpress. "I know I'm not exactly a Jedi, but even when I left the Order I let the Force guide me in everything in my life. And when I watched the rough version of that holo, the Force told me to come here. I edited a viewable cut, with much effort I have to say, because I'm totally ignorant in this area, and asked if Jane could take me here."

Stretching my back, I nodded. "Yeah, it was a good idea."

"The Force rarely disappoints me. Well, except for some minor details..."

I knew what he was talking about, but at least he wasn't so caustic as in the past. "I know. I know all too well how the Dark Side can twist our minds. It almost overcame me, that some bad shit I have to deal with."

"Well, good to know it didn't."

A thick but for once not awkward silence fell in the large hall. There was something wrong with him. Not physically, he was in perfect shape, for a 42 year old man that spent most of his time at a desk, but there was something in him, in his "song" in the Force, that was off. As if he was... sad.

"Hey Ferus, you OK? Is something wrong on Yavin?"

He stole a glance up towards me then went back fixating the ground. "It's just... I don't like to spend so much time with Jane in a confined space. It unnerves me, even more than the holo."

"Awkward silence for six hours?"

He hesitated before replying. Something was really off. "Yeah, kinda. The only moment we talked, we actually argued again about the fact that I'm the only suspect on her former homicide case and everything..."

"Hey, that case is what? Nearly nine years old! She's not over it yet?"

He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. "Yep. She took it pretty bad. You know, she's a passionate woman, and she took her job very seriously, I doubt she'll ever get over it."

Yep, something was definitely off with him. It was nervousness or annoyance because of the flight. He liked her! A lot! Like...

I remember that in that moment I was so shocked by the realization that I definitely thought "_What t__he fuck, he's in love with her!_" but managed to keep quiet to not make him angry with me again.

"I've had my share of passionate women in my life. Sometimes they can be a pain in the ass, but they're worth it!"

"Damn, you married probably the most passionate woman in the Galaxy! I get you had your share! But I highly doubt she can be a pain in the ass!"

"Tell me that when she questioned every freaking order I gave her for her own safety, practically forced me to go on Geonosis disobeying my Master's order and practically started the Clone Wars! Tell me she's not a pain in the ass sometimes!"

He chuckled. "Yeah, definitely. But she hasn't started a war in twenty years, it can't be that bad now."

"Oh, definitely not. We're doing good now. OK, listen, I've got to take a shower because I reek more than a wet wookie, you needed anything?"

"Yeah, actually... I need the password for the data connection, but I can't find Lysveet and it's urgent."

I nodded. "Sure." I grabbed my datapad and using a software that Lysveet had created, I compiled a new set of data access credential for Ferus and sent the username and password via internal text message to his comlink. It beeped not half a moment later. "There you go. Insert those credential, mind of the block letters and you're good to go."

He did as told and confirmed everything was good. "Thank you. I need to send a couple of documents to the high hierarchy and Senator Organa asked if I could send him a report about what we were doing here."

"Good. Now, I'll take that shower and see if my kids managed to hit that target with that famous shot in the dark."

I took my time in the shower to be at least presentable, dedicating some time to trim my now slightly long beard - Padmè asked me to keep it long some years earlier and she liked it, so I kept it long - and changed clothes, then I ran downstairs to check on the rest of the crew.

"How are things going here?" I asked from the door, looking for Obi-Wan.

"If you're looking for your Master, he's not here." said Jax throwing a ball to one of the kids. Playtime for them.

"Where is he?"

"I think he went upstairs to see how the twins were doing..."

"Right. I was going upstairs myself. You doin' alright here?"

He nodded. "Sure, we're alright. Jane asked if she could help us and we sent her teaching the basics of hand to hand combat to some of the older kids."

I looked at the far left of the garden, the direction he was pointing at and saw Jane slowly showing a way to block a knife attack to a kid. Yeah, she was a good example for them, not just another training. They needed passion, they needed concentration and they needed something new. Yep, Jane was definitely a good addition to the team.

"OK. I'll go and see if they came out with something. Need anything, just call me alright?"

Then I went to see how my kids were doing, only to find Luke pacing around the room with his datapad in his hands, Leia working in Luke's spot and Obi-Wan trying to make Luke calm down and make him sit back on his chair.

"Luke, please, stop pacing like that, you're making me nervous!"

"I... I can't sit. I watched this thing so many times I'm getting nauseated."

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and raised his hands, defeated. "Sometimes you remind me so much of your father I can't distinguish between memories of him and reality. It's all a long streak of deja vu."

"Hey, is that a compliment or an insult?" I asked.

He looked in my direction and sighed. "More like a constructive criticism. I heard you were going to blow off some steam!"

Immediately, my son shot a deadly glare at my Master. "Oh please don't tell me that..."

It was my time to roll my eyes at him. "No, Luke, no, I didn't ditch the gym to have sex with your mother!"

The three of them looked at me with a face that had stamped "_Stuff we didn't want to know_" on them then went back to their work. "Anyway, how are you doing?"

"We've isolated some chunks of usable holos, but we still have eight hours of footage to look through and it will take a while." replied Leia, eyes fixed on the holostream projected in front of her. She kept going back and forward in the same scene, looking for the right angle. "Artoo is processing those blocks we thought might be useful, but it's taking a while."

"He's turning them from 3D images to 2D pictures?"

She nodded. "Yes. I found out his image processor is way better than the one I managed to download from the net, and consider it's a shareware copy with limited functions for the free edition..."

"Hey, you're in a hacker's office, crack a serial number and use get the full software!"

"Dad, it's illegal. I don't want to be caught with a pirated software on my computer." the chastising tone she used reminded me so much of her mother it was almost painful.

"If that's what bothers you, I can tell you're already living a life of crime by not being legally existing in the Imperial Tax Registry, so, technically, you're already a criminal. Don't worry about trivial things like piracy, you're a trained Jedi and you're still alive and not under direct Imperial Control. That's way worse."

"Yeah, I get it, but that doesn't mean I have the right to commit lesser crimes just because technically I'm already a criminal, alright? That's how I am."

And that's how I liked my daughter. "OK. Now, I was thinking that maybe I can take down my own computer and help you with the work, you said you have eight hours of footage, one more pair of eyes can help."

And in the span of ten minutes I was there with them, killing my eyes and brain with blurry footage from minicameras mounted on the front of Kota's troops' helmets, crappy close cirquits and everything in between. After an hour, I felt the beginning of a terrible migraine forming right behind my eyes, but at least I had reviewed three hours of footage and found sixteen more usable chunks for Artoo to process and it wasn't even six in the evening.

And after we had viewed everything Ferus had downloaded from his cloud space in the Alliance network, we started back from the beginning and went through it again, hoping that reviewing it would help us find more chunks. And we did.

"By the Force, Artoo's gonna fry a circuit if we keep uploading stuff for the bidimensional processing." stated Luke, breaking the silence that had fell in the small room.

"Nah, I uploaded his cooling systems last year. He'll be fine." I mumbled shoving a mug of now cold coffee away from me. Another long streak of caffeine addition was approaching, I knew it. Better off start soon.

"You'll never stop tinkering on him, won't you?"

"I'll never stop tinker, period. And I doubt you'll ever stop doing it too."

Luke sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "I guess... Hey Artoo, how long till we have some stills?"

He beeped his responce and Luke looked at me for a translation. He wasn't so fluid in droidspeak yet. "He's got about thirty percent of the work done. If we want, he can deliver the first six thousand bidimensional images on our computers immediately."

We all looked at each other. "Who wants to review all the stills?" I asked.

Apparently, no. No one was willing to review the stills, which was even more boring than the review of the already studied footage.

"Right... I'll do it..."


	5. A Frame In The Bigger Picture

**Chapter 5 - A Frame In The Bigger Picture**

Right... I had offered to take up the job, I had to take it to the end.

But it was boring as hell.

Maybe I forgot to tell you how that thing worked: to make a very long story very short, we had spent most of the day looking through more than eight hours of footage from various sources, trying to look for the best sections to analyze and find the right angle to see his face. How does the rest work? Practically, holos are bi-dimensional images projected so they look 3D, but the cameras that capture the images have particular lenses and sensors that together process an image in various angles. That way, they make together an image that can be projected and that can look 3D.

Basically, a holo is a composition of a myriad of bi-dimensional images worked so they from a sort of solid object that can be projected with specific projector that also have their responsibility in making them look three-dimensional.

But, being composed of 2D images, as they are composed, they can be decomposed.

Each section of holo must be processed through a special software, the very same that compose them, into individual frames. Those frames then can be turned into image files and viewed on every screen you can reach, but not through an holo projector, for obvious reasons. Simple as it sounds, it's a long process, because to have a decent quality for those images, you need a very powerful software. We were lucky enough that I had replaced Artoo's camera and installed a brand new holo processor that could make high definition holos, but also could decompose holos in high definition images.

Too bad that a minute of footage was composed of at least one thousand images. And we had fifty six minutes of viable video, that means parts of holo we deemed useful and we hoped they could show the Sith's face.

It was a matter of finding the right frame in the bigger picture, literally.

And I had offered to view them all, and as Artoo processed parts of the holos we had uploaded in his memory core, more came out. I looked in the corner of the screen and saw I still had six thousand images to view. With more incoming.

The number was staggering. And boredom was a difficult beast to beat.

It was late evening, not yet eleven PM but the house was already quiet. Most of the children were already in their beds, twins included, and the adults were scattered around the house. I had heard Darrick talking to Lysveet about sending her to bed early and how he would put Willow in bed himself, leaving her time to take things slowly. Her day must had been hard, that second pregnancy wasn't going as smoothly as they had hoped. Well, I knew how they felt.

Ferus had apparently disappeared after dinner and Jax was taking care of the evening meditation session last time I had poked outside Lysveet's office. As of the rest of the crew, I knew nothing.

I kept scrolling through the images and each time I deleted a chunk, an equivalent number came up from Artoo.

It was frustrating.

And history told me frustration didn't work well with me.

The clock ticked eleven PM and I decided a change of scenary would only do good. I needed to move a little, or my back would have hurt like hell the next day.

I left the datapad I was using to view the images in the office and went to the kitchen, ready to make a huge pot of coffee to sustain my probably all-night-long research of that damned face.

Groaning and whining, I filled the pot with water, added the coffee in the filter and set it, then turned it on and waited for the percolator to work its magic. The way I had come to rely on the beverage still marveled me, most of all when Lena and Lennard where newborns: Padmè could stay up all night and take sparse naps during the day and she was prefectly fine, ready to do it again the next day. I would stay up all night, crash on the couch for six or more hours during the day and I still would need a large intake of caffeine to work.

Apparently, my sleep-vigil cycle worked on different patterns, and coffee had become my safety net and a morning ritual: it was well known that asking me questions before my first cup was a bad idea, but after half of the first cup I was ready to work and answer any kind of question anyone would ask. If I knew the answers, of course.

Anyway, when the pot finally signaled it was all ready, I grabbed a mug and filled it. I added a drop of milk and some sugar, and I was ready to go, when I heard someone walking down the stairs in my direction. One moment later, Leia appeared in the door. "Hey dad, what re you doing?"

I raised the steaming mug in front of me. "Coffee. If I need to stay up all night to look at all those pictures Artoo is literally vomiting on my datapad, I need to stay awake."

"You know we could wait in the morning, sleep and work on them altogether?" she said, sitting down at the small table.

"You think I would be able to sleep tonight, knowing there's a Sith out there we knew nothing about, killing Jedi?"

"Good point. Is there any left?"

"Sure. Milk, no sugar as always?" I asked, grabbing another mug and filling it.

"Yeah. It's always been like this, since you introduced me to the wicked ways of caffeine addiction, you know that!" she replied as I set the cup in the table in front of her. "I know you sometimes get it confused with Luke's."

I shrugged my shoulders. "His is the exact contrary of yours, because you're each other's contrary, even if your twins. And you're not addicted, you just need that extra boost in the morning, like trillions of other people in the Galaxy. If there's someone addicted, that's me." I joked.

She smiled, absentmindedly, and took a sip of her coffee. "Wow, you made it strong!" she exclaimed.

"You know I don't like that dishwater thing that sometimes your mother makes."

"She only wants you to sleep normal hours. That's why she doesn't make it too strong. You're crancky when you don't sleep." finally a heartfelt laughter, even if short lived.

"Look who's talking! Come on Leia, we both know we're insominiac and that when we're worried it gets worse. It's in the family, my mom was like that too."

"I wish I had met her." she sighed, and I soon followed.

"Me too Leia. She would have loved you. But you're not here for coffee and you're not here to ask me about grandma. What's wrong?"

Useless to say it, I was right. I could read her like an open book, most of all when she tried to act casual. Casual didn't work for her. Nor for her brother, that was sure. As soon as I asked her what was wrong, her shoulders sagged and she laid her head on her crossed arms on the table. "Can you tell me what isn't?"

"Leia, you know why..."

"Dad, I know the drill. It's always the same, over and over again. But I want to do more than this! Today, as weird as it may seem, I had fun working on that tape, really doing something other than teaching the younglings! Why can't I go and help Organa, infiltrate the Senate and do something real again? You don't think I'm capable?"

I set the cup on the table and sat down in front of her. "Leia, it's not like that and you know it perfectly well. We know you're more than up to the job, we've known that for a long time. You're like your mother, you were born of the same mold, we know that, but you're also my daughter, and I'm sorry but you know that comes with a huge weight to bear. And that weight is the way you charge your words with the Force. You do Mind Tricks not even realizing you're doing them, and being so close to the Emperor, under the watching eyes of the Inquisitors... they would spot you as soon as you set foot in the Rotunda."

She was mortified. As I spoke, her eyes darkened with each word I said. She was well aware of that problem and we were working hard to correct that tendency, but it was hard. Most of all because, like her mother, she was a perfectionist and she saw that as a flaw, and that demoralized her. And I hated to see her like this.

"Leia, listen to me, you're eighteen now, and believe me when I say I hated being eighteen, I hated teenage as a whole, I have to say. There were so many rules I had to follow and that didn't fit me... it was like a living hell. No wonder Ferus and I parted in bad terms, when... well, when I made that mess, I was a frustrated teen under the heavy influence of the Dark Side..."

"That's not comforting, dad."

"It's comforting when you look at the bigger picture. That was just a frame, a tiny picture. Look at where I am now. Still in bad terms with Ferus, but in a few years, I learned how to control myself. And that's the bigger picture."

"I don't want it to take years to be able to do what I want though." she sighed. She sounded so defeated it hurt me to see her like this, late at night, after a day in hell in that cramped office, viewing hours of footage of people being dismembered... she didn't need to feel that way, at all.

"I wasn't working so actively on my problems like you are now. I had time and concentration enough only when I was sent in prison, but you've been working on that for years now, and you've covered a major distance since then. You can do it, and it won't take long, I can feel it."

She almost hid behind the now forgotten cup of coffee she had in front of her. "That's the reason I came down here."

There she was, going around the real matter until someone else brought it up. That was a way to have people agree with her by leading them to believe they had the original idea, something she probably learned from her mother, considering it was one of the politicians' preferred technique to have followers agree with them. "Why?"

"Because of what Obi-Wan said the other day."

"About the way I perceive the Force? About the drumming?"

Leia nodded, running her forefinger on the brim of her cup. I remembered how everyone not aware of that thing was surprised to learn about that major change that had caused a complete revolution in the way I felt the influence of the Force, years before, and Luke and Leia were probably the most shocked. "Yeah, about that. Why keeping it from us?"

"You want the unconditional truth? No secrets, no lies, no half truths to spare you the gruesome details?"

"Yes dad, I want the truth. I think I deserve it, after nine years."

Oh well, if she wanted the truth...

"Because it scared the shit out of me."

The down-to-earth reply startled her. "It scared you?"

"You have no idea how much it creeped me out. For all my life I had perceived the Force in a way, strong or weak as it was, then all of a sudden, after I was beaten to a pulp by a bunch of idiots commanded by an Inquisitor who told me that I was the product of a manipulation of Midichlorian operated by Darth Plagueis, after Master Yoda had had confirmed that Dalan's theory could be founded and after I had witnessed the return from the world of the dead of Master Qui Gon Jinn, not to mention that your mother had just realized she was pregnant with your sister... it suddenly changes to this continuous noise I hear in my head, like this war drum pounding in my ears, suffocating everything else, every noise is wiped away, I can only hear this. It sucks Leia, really, it sucks hard, most of all it sucks when I was totally blinded by rage after that fucker of Inquisitor told me he was going to deal with me, Obi-Wan and Jax, then let his men _have their way_ with your mother after he was done with us, then kill her." at that, she cringed. That was one of the gruesome details I wanted to leave out, but she had asked the truth. "It sucks, that's why I didn't tell you. Only the adults know about this, but not in details. Your mom knows about it, everything, but after we came back, the drums disappeared. As they came, they went away, except for some very specific moments, until the other night."

"Specific moments?"

"You don't wanna know."

I managed to tear a smile from her. "Boy, you and mom really can't keep your hands off each other!"

"Leia, I spent seven years in prison and one year surrounded by a bunch of other guys, years she spent taking care of you and your brother and little more than that, I think we deserve to be a little clingy."

"I didn't say that you don't deserve that. I think it's cute, but I wonder how why we don't have any more siblings..."

"I think what happened with Lennart scared us, enough that we decided we would not take anymore chances with other kids. I think that's why you don't have a fifth brother or sister."

"Yeah, that was scary... You and mom were trying to say everything was alright but you kept pacing up and down the house at night because you wanted to keep a close eye on her."

"I felt so helpless then... I really hope you'll never have to go through something like this because it's probably the scariest thing I've ever experienced. Even more than that thing about the Force perception."

She made a strange face. "Dad, I'm a bit too young to have kids on my own. I have enough of the little pack we have here."

I smiled. "The dark side of being the oldest between the younger."

"Could be worse. But tell me, this noise... how does it sound?"

I leaned back on the chair and tried to find a way to explain. It wasn't easy. "I don't know how to say it... think of the drums of the kind of music your brother likes so much, sometimes it's like that, relentless, fast, hard and brutal in some ways. That's how I heard them when Dalan told me he wanted to kill your mother. Then there's the quiet and steady drum I heard when I was trying to pinpoint the exact location of The Valley Of The Jedi on Ruusan, an hour earlier than that. Or the completely fucked up thing I hear when..."

"Too much info dad. Really, I think it's cute that you and mom are doing so well behind your bedroom closed door, but I don't need the details."

"Hey, I was going to say when your mom and I do things, but alright, let's stop there. No details."

"Thank you dad. I've already had a fucked up childhood, I don't need late teenage traumas."

I chuckled. "If you call that a trauma... there are worse things."

"Worse than catching your parents having sex? No thank you, I'd like to think I was born by parthenogenesis, thank you."

"Ask the banister in the patio. It will tell you otherwise."

That upset her more than anything I had said earlier. "Dad! Really, I don't need to know I was conceived during a round of acrobatic sex in tha patio!"

"I can't pinpoint one precise location. Actually, I don't even remember how many times we had sex that night..."

"What? You know the exact night Luke and I were conceived?" she was completely stupefied by the fact that I did really know the exact night.

"Absolutely. I get here for one night only, don't sleep a minute, go back to the Sieges in the Outer Rim and five months later, when I came back to Coruscant, your mom tells me she's pregnant. It doesn't take a master degree in math to do the right calculation."

"That's gross dad! Now you're gonna tell me you even know the date of the night you two conceived Lena and Lennart?"

I thought about it for a moment. "No. At least, I can tell you the date of the morning we conceived Lena, but I'm not sure about Lennart."

"It almost looks like you were trying to have another baby."

"Don't tell your mother I told you this, but all of you... you weren't sought. We did want to have a family, but with the war and everything, it was pretty much impossible. We were usually very careful about it, but sometimes biology wins, or maybe it's just the will of the Force. Some people consider this kind of happening incidents, I consider all of you gifts, because you four are the best thing, beside your mother, that ever happened in my life. It was the thought of leaving you fatherless that drove me away from the path leading to the Dark Side. I was a step away from becoming Darth Vader, but when I thought I was going to have a child, because at the time we thought we were having just one baby, and not you two troublemakers, and that the path of I was walking would have left you alone, that I would totally miss your life, well, it was one of those things that made me stop, that made me turn back to the right path. I'll never be grateful enough to you."

"It's good to know we did something that big when we weren't even born. Makes me feel important."

"You are important. The most important thing in our lives. If you kids asked us to leave the Rebellion, I bet my lightsaber your mother would pack our things in five minutes and order me to load the cargo area of our ship as soon as you finish the sentence _I want to go away from all of this_. Come on, it's getting late, you should go to bed."

"I know. Thanks for the chat dad, I needed it." she stood up and walked to the door, only to stop right on the frame. "Dad? Were you serious about talking about our Knighthood?"

I nodded, slowly. "Serious as an heart attack. You've reached a point where all Padawans are taken in consideration for Knighthood. Some reach it early, like you, others later, like I did. Work on your Mind Trick problem as much as Luke's working on his temper and we'll talk about it as soon as you get them solved. Now go, sleep tight."

Then she disappeared.

And I was alone again.

And I needed it. I finished my coffee, happy to have explained what had happened so many years ago to my daughter and happy to have moved my concentration away from my task for some time, but it was time to work again on my research.

I needed to find that frame. So I poured another one, ready to face a sleepless night.

With a fresh mind ready to concentrate again, I went back to the office but decided it wasn't the right set for that kind of work, so I took the datapad and went outside, on the huge patio, enjoying the cool breeze of the night. Summers in that region could be blistering hot, but fortunately the nearness of the lake mitigated the heat, mostly during the night, and in the past I had found that place perfect for boring tasks, or deep philosophical musings, so I walked on the far end, in the most secluded place I could think of out there, where the fronds of some kind of creeper plant that had been planted who knows when to create the roof of the veranda were thicker, grabbed a chair and set down my tiny headquarter for the night.

Feet propped on the stone banister, beside the cup of coffee, back toward the entrance of the house, I turned the datapad on and went back flicking through the images, with an automated gesture. I deleted the useless ones in big chunks right from the preview page, because they were clearly useless, and inspected closely those that could have revealed his face, running my fingers on the sensible touch screen to increase or decrease the magnification, running filters to reduce the grain or improve the lightning, stuff like that.

Excluding a quick trip to the toilet, I kept searching for three hours straight, not even realizing time was passing by so fast. The house was quiet, even the forest around us was silent, except for the casual sound of a hunting night bird trying to catch fishes in the lake by the dim light of the crecent moon, or a chirping insect from time to time, it was all quiet.

Almost creepy quiest, but I didn't mind. We'd had a very noisy day, nervousness running through us like water in the riverbed, and a quiet moment was everything I needed to concentrate. Not being confined by the walls of the office I'd worked most of the afternoon and late evening felt good and I could keep up with Artoo pretty good, never being too far behind him.

Up until two thirty in the morning, everything was fine, until I heard the door of the house slide open. From my position I couldn't see who was coming out, but the mysterious person swiftly walked to the opposite end of the veranda from my position, so I could see... her.

It was Jane. The long wavy mane of chestnut hair made her clearly recognizable.

Through the Force, her presence felt like she was in distress, as if something bothered her, but it wasn't the news of the Sith chasing the remaining Jedi. She was worried about something, or someone, and it reverberated all around her, like an echo of distress that tormented her soul. It was something deep. Deep enough to keep her up at night. I knew she was an insomniac, just like me, but I thought that after a long flight and a long afternoon spent playing with the kids out in the backyard she would have been worn out enough to sleep through the night without problems, even with Ferus not ten yards away, but no such luck.

For a moment, I smiled remembering the long nights we spent together discussing about politics, the Rebellion and the Empire, pacing up and down the long corridors of Dantooine base with Lennart wide awake, as I tried to put him down to sleep when he was hyperactive. He was a good kid, quiet and everything, but sometimes, when he was around three, four months old, he just decided he wanted to stay awake all night. That was when I started walking out in the empty corridors of the base, trying to wear him out, just to find Jane out there too, doing the same, walking to burn off residual energy from the day, trying to sleep. One night she also offered to take care of Lennart herself, so I could rest my arms for a while. We soon learned she had a magical touch with kids, and a great singing voice: the moment she picked him up, his whimpers and whining always stopped, and if he was still fussy, she would sing him anything, from a traditional Corellian lullaby to the latest pop success, and he would fall asleep instantly.

Yep, that woman had a magic touch and was great with kids. It was a pity she was single, I could feel she had so much love to give and she had to hold it all back.

Well, she hadn't seen me, even if she wasn't too far away from me, and I wasn't going to disturb her. Maybe she wanted to take a walk around the house, or around the lake. If she didn't want company, then I wouldn't disturb her, so I went back to my work, looking away again from her.

But the list of sleepless people was about to be one name longer.

Probably ten minutes later, the door opened again and someone else came out. I distractedly looked at who was that, and I saw Ferus stand on the door frame for a moment, before turning and closing the sliding door. He stood there, not moving, again for some time, just looking at Jane.

I had already realized that he had feelings for that woman, but apparently their past incident made it impossible for him to just ask her out, just like that. He remained there, just looking at her, before deciding to move.

We walked, silently, behind her, but didn't join her at the banister. He stopped a few steps away from her.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him, not even turning around.

I could hear them perfectly well in the still of the night, even if they weren't talking that loud. Probably they didn't want to wake anyone in the house, since some of the bedrooms were just above us, with open windows to let the cool night chase away the warmth left by the hot day.

"I heard you."

"Did I wake you?"

"No. I couldn't sleep. It just took me time to decide if I wanted to be verbally bitchslapped for the umpteenth time coming down here."

Jane chuckled. "It's been years since the last time I mistreated you Ferus, you know that."

"Just turned into and Ice Queen. It's an improvement." he mumbled, as if ashamed to speak those words.

They remained silent for a while, before Ferus spoke again. "We used to be better than this."

She sighed, a deep, defeated sight. "Ferus, don't start it again."

"What? What should I not start? Jane, we can let something that happened nine years ago get in the way of our lives! We're more than that, than resentment! We can't waste two years together like this!"

I raised my head from the datapad and looked at them. Two years? Two years together?

What the fuck was going on?

* * *

_OK, sorry again for the delay, but I needed some time to work this out, also I had a bout of big inspiration to write the story of Jane and Ferus. You want to read what the heck happened between those two from the very beginning? You will. I just need to put the last touches here and there on the first chapter of the spin off. Those two are just too much fun to write! _

_Anyway, hope you liked it. With summer I should have more time to write, as soon as I the belt exam in ju jitsu is gone (later tonight) I'll have even more time. Hope you liked it. See ya next time!_


	6. Lose It

**Chapter**** 6 - ****Lose****It**

"_...__We __can__'__t __waste __two __years __together __like __this__!_"

His words echoed like the blow of a heavy cannon in the quiet of the night. What the fuck? Unable to resist the pull of curiosity, I looked at their direction and found them still in the same position, with Ferus a few steps away from Jane, who was now leaning more heavily on the banister, facing the lake. That feeling of distress I had perceived around her some minutes earlier was now overwhelmingly close to fear but not as if she was scared of something tangible, it was more like fear of her own feelings. The problem was that things were escalating quickly, at least in the Force. I was hit by waves of strong, contrasting feelings emanated by both of them, and it wasn't exactly comfortable for me. From my point of view it was like being in a trash compactator, pushed by two walls closing on each other. It sucked. Really. You know, sometimes it's cool to know exactly how people around you feel, but in that particular case, it was hell. Like going through Lena's birth all over again, just with contrasting feelings taking over labor pains.

Really _strong _contrasting feelings. With a big fat stress on _strong_.

Another problem was the fact that I couldn't move. I mean, I could try to get inside the house but I'm clumsy as fuck when caught in situations like this one and seriously, I didn't want to get caught unwillingly eavesdropping their very private conversation. I didn't want to eavesdrop anyone in that house actually, or in the whole Galaxy. People had the right to their own privacy, but it was nearly impossible to move away from my position without crossing their line of sight. Jane was a trained detective and would have spotted me in a second, and Ferus... well, he was Ferus, he could spot me a mile away, as if he had a sense dedicated to finding me everywhere I was. And even if I managed to sneak undetected and reach the door, that damn sliding door was noisy as hell.

Really, I was stuck between a huge rock, and a very, very hard place. And I couldn't move.

Only thing I could do was standing there, doing all I could to hide.

And listen.

"I told you Ferus, don't start it again." more than a request, it sounded like a plea. Jane was

begging him not to bring out something that scared her to death.

"Alright. I won't start it." he said, raising his hands as if defeated. "Are you OK?" he then asked, after a while.

Jane shrugged her shoulders, still facing the lake. "Just couldn't sleep. A bit jet lagged, that's all."

"Yeah, know the feeling. Same here."

She turned around and faced him, with a faint smile on her face. "You? Jet lagged? What the hell happened to the man who could take a nap on a rock and call it a fitful sleep?"

He chuckled, looking as innocent as he could. "What can I say? Times goes by and suddenly you're not thirty anymore." he joked. Well, not much. The infamous mark of age 40 was gone for both of us and a life of deprivation had taken its toll on both of us. "By the way, what was that? The Annual Police Pic Nic?"

"Yep, the first one we went to. You literally fell asleep on a rock after the triathlon just because your head was turned in such an uncomfortable position it hurt me. Then there was that family reunion, where my nieces and nephews literally destroyed playing hide and seek you and you had to escape them by hiding on the top shelf of the wine cellar to take a moment and rest! What the hell happened that you can't sleep in an extra comfy bed like that?""

"I just think that sometimes my Jedi training kicks in and I really can sleep anywhere, if I need some energy, but not tonight." There was a long, meaningful pause of silence, probably even awkward, and they just spent it looking at each other, finally at ease. It was Ferus who broke the moment, literally."We were happy then."

And Jane sighed, shoulders sagging. "Yeah, we were happy. Then everything changed."

Another long, thick silence.

"Yeah, I know. But I told you million of times during these years: we can't let an accident destroy what we have."

"Had, Ferus, use the appropriate tense. And don't call it an accident. What happened between us cannot be erased by a simple _I__'__m__sorry_. You can't just tell me you're sorry. You lied to me. For two years. You lied to me, keeping things from me that had a big impact on my life, to say the least. What were you thinking Ferus?"

"I... I was trying to protect you!" _Here __comes __the __heated __argument__..._ I thought to myself. And I just wanted out, as fast as I could. "I couldn't just go and tell you_Hey__, __just __to __let __you __know__, __I __work __for __the __Inquisitors __but __I __pass __info __to __the __Rebel __Alliance__. __I__'__m __the __guy __that __can __have __you __killed__! __Still __want __to __go __out __with __me__?_ They could have killed you if they found out about my little game and discovered you knew about that too!"

"I don't care Ferus! For two years you led me to believe you were a simple clerk, that you had a desk job and that you believed in what you were doing and even if I didn't like that much I could come to terms with that, but then suddenly I find out you were part of the Rebel Alliance and that in reality you were an active agent with a true license to kill?"

"That's not true, I wasn't part of the Rebel Alliance, I just passed info to some of their agents and kept some friends safe. I told you, I did have a license to kill, but that comes with the job, with the maroon suit and the Force training! And a lot of shitty things like tracking down people who are Force Sensitive and throwing them in prison. It sucked, but I had to do it, so I could protect my friends!"

"Yeah, I know, I met Jax and the rest of the guys, in case you forgot it. And everyone else. But you told me you _loved_ me. And with loving someone comes telling the truth! I told you the truth about me, everything, even if I wasn't allowed to share the details of my cases with anyone outside the police!"

"Love, Jane. I _still _love you, use the appropriate tense."

She bit her lip and waited a moment before replying. Then something happened: they lowered their voices, but I still could hear them as clear as if they were speaking right next to me, but their voices were _in__my__head_. I could hear them through the Force, and that was new. Not scary, but new. I didn't know I could do that, but maybe because I didn't want to do that! That night was getting better and better by the moment.

New Force power trick: Force Eavesdropping. Hurray, new shit to deal with! Damn it, as years went by, I felt like the Force's training ground, as if it was literally screwing with me, using my life to perfect itself through my experiences.

Felt like a damn comic book, I don't know, like I was the awkward super hero saving the galaxy through trial and error.

Truth is, sometimes reality beats fantasy.

"If you loved me then you should have been more sincere." she was fuming with anger. And I was left there, trying to hide my presence in any way I knew, because they could really, really be dangerous, both of them, when angry. It was bad enough to witness their argument, hearing it all and most of all feeling it all through the Force, I didn't really want to deal with the repercussions of getting caught spying on them, even if I was not willingly spying on them. I had enough of my wife punishing me for stupid stuff.

"About what? About what, Jane? Sometimes being sincere kills, and I didn't want you to be killed because of me! Don't you understand? I told you that millions of times! I was protecting you!"

"And I told you the same exact number of times that I could protect myself perfectly well, thank you, I didn't need your protection. What I needed was a relationship with you, based on something real. At this point I think those two years were based on lies, and nothing else."

Ferus grunted, but it sounded more like a growl.

"That's not true and you know it." the way he spoke made his words so charged with Force energy that it made me cringe. It was getting worse by the moment, it was like he was going to lose it and do something stupid. "I've been sincere on everything else except my job, can you at least give me some credit about that?"

"But you killed those five men." she spat out so suddenly I jumped a little on my chair.

The Force trembled once again, like an earthquake. Ferus was furious, Jane was experiencing one of the worst bouts of wrath I had ever felt in my life (and I had been close to Darth Vader enough to know what wrath was) and even if they had lowered their voices I could hear them speak in my head.

It was like the Force wanted me to know what had happened between those two. Too bad I had picked the wrong night to camp outside on the veranda.

"I. Did. Not. Kill. Those. Men." he punctuated every word, stressing each of them, to mark his point. "I didn't do anything to them. I didn't even know them, why would I want them dead?"

"You are the Inquisitor, you tell me."

They were both about to burst into flames. Self combustion right in front of my eyes. Ferus took a deep breath, trying to calm down a little. Yep, he was really losing it. "Am I an Inquisitor now? Do I wear the uniform? The lightsaber? Am I an Inquisitor now?"

He took a step towards Jane and she leaned back on her banister again, hands protectively folded across her chest. He was towering her, at least a foot taller than her, fists clenched at his sides as if he was trying hard not to hit her, trembling from head to toe. I had never seen them so angry.

"Tell me Jane, am I an Inquisitor?" he whispered.

His voice changed tone in such a hasted way I could barely recognize him, it was thick, darkened, like a growl, but I swear that if I had been a woman, that kind of voice would have made me drop my pants in a millisecond. I still wonder how Jane could still have her pants on. Through the Force I could hear everything, every small inflection, every tiny detail, every rising or lowering of the tone, I felt it, really, as if they were speaking straight through my head, along with the slow, steady pounding of the drums. Being forced to listen to something so private was also unnerving.

I didn't want to know those things, but it seemed like there was another plan for me. And them.

"You worked with them for years Ferus, you think you can cancel a label like that so quickly from you?" her voice faltered, more than once.

"Then tell me Jane, do you see an Inquisitor now?"

She shook her head. "No. But I don't even see the man that I used to love." she whispered. Oh fuck... that was everything I could think about. "I see you Ferus... But you're not the man I love. Not anymore."

"Just ten years older. It's still me."

Gently, in complete contrast of his actions up to now, he framed her face with his hands and tilted her head so she was looking straight up at him. "No, you're not. You can't be. Too many things happened, you can't be the same man. People change in ten years, you know that." She whispered, like a desperate cry for help.

"Jane, listen, we've done this before." He whispered, softly. His voice was broken, he was worried but also desperate. The way he was hurting twisted the Force around him, making it obvious to me. It was terrible to witness that kind of desperation. I had never seen him like that, not even when… well, when I had killed our friend. "How many times? One hundred? One thousand? Who cares. Just... We've been living under the same roof for years now and you must know it, I haven't changed. I'm still me, but if you can't see it and if you hate me so much for not being the man used to be then let me out, please, I beg you, let me out of this, let me out of this misery, because I can't live without you, but I can't live with you either, not like this. Let me out, please, it's hell when you're around!"

Jane rolled her eyes, as if trying to hide the tears menacing to fall any minute now. "You think it's not the same for me? You think it's so easy to be around you, live under the same roof, knowing that I can run into you every moment of every day, knowing that you _know_ how I feel about you? Damn it Ferus, I _love _you... but I can't _trust _you, not until I know you didn't kill those men. That you didn't lie to me even about that." she swallowed a thick lump that had formed in her throat. "Show me the evidences proving your innocence, then we'll talk."

"I can't... I told you, I can't prove it. I..." he made a long pause, then sighed. "Damn, I just want to kiss you right now."

I dared to look at them for a moment. Jane was sitting on the large banister, with Ferus so close to her I dared to say there was no space between them, their foreheads touching, her fingers clutched his short air to keep him from moving. They were really one small step away from having sex right there on the banister. I tried to chase away the thought. "Why don't you do that?"

"Because if I kiss you I won't be able to stop." he confessed, heart open and sincere.

My limbs went all rigid for a moment, realizing what he had just said. It wasn't only an impression, he did want to have sex with her. Fuck. Add embarrassment to awkwardness.

"I won't stop you. And we've had sex in worse places than this."

Ferus sighed, loudly. He was holding back, I don't know if for her sake, or his own. Maybe his own sanity. Maybe he was about to stop everything and go back to his room. Maybe. Maybe I would have been lucky enough and they would have moved back in either of their rooms but…

"Don't blame me for not warning you..."

I was screwed.

I swear, the same moment Jane dragged him towards her and kissed him, my head was about to explode. Their feelings were so powerful it felt like being submerged by the tallest wave you can imagine, dragged in the deep water then washed ashore again and again. I had to concentrate hard to block those feelings, because if they went on like that I would have been like watching an interactive porn movie, only in my head, experiencing everything those two felt.

And believe me, their feelings were strong. Really strong.

It felt like cheating on my wife.

But that didn't change the fact that I was like ten yards away from them and I didn't really want to be there. I was lucky I only needed to turn and I couldn't see them, and that was something I was thankful for, but...

Yeah, it was getting worse by the moment.

When I heard the metallic click of a belt being opened, I realized I had to move. I had to do something, go somewhere, even if that meant climbing the wall and slide in the upstairs corridor, to safety.

I mean, I was an expert of quickies, and apparently those two were not too far behind me, I know how it all worked but... Seriously, I had to get the hell out of there and into the house, in any, freaking way I could find.

Or I would have been the one to lose it and make a freaking mess in there.

I looked around, consciously avoiding their direction and realized the only way out, or in this case in, was climbing the structure holding the climbing plants and then get into the window of the first floor corridor, hoping it was open. A tightrope walker move, but the safest and quickest way out of that damn situation. Seriously, it was getting worse by the minute. Oh well, of course it was, those two were having one of the most raging rounds of angry sex I could even imagine and I was there, ten yards away, hearing their voices in my head and being continuously hit by the strong waves of the Force surrounding and emanating from them...Shit, even after years it creeps me out. Even telling Ferus I had overheard their conversation,

Sometime later, wasn't enough of a payback. At all.

Anyway, I decided to move when one of them moaned loud enough I heard them with my ears, and since those noises were becoming louder by the moment I stood up, as silently as I could, and put the datapad in my pants pocket. Feeling like an acrobat again after years of doing nothing more acrobatic than managing four children, a wife and a wild bunch that was my unconventional family, I jumped and grabbed the edge of the structure and pulled myself up.

I was so ridiculous I'm still ashamed for that. Anyway…

Catching balance on the old wooden frame, and hoping it would hold my weight, I looked up and saw that the hallway window was closed. Guess what, I'm lucky when I don't need to be.

Determined to get the hell out of there, I scanned the wall and found an open window, so I used the Force to jump higher and landed straight on the windowsill. It was my daughter's room, Lena, and when I set foot on the floor, my clumsiness that managed to stay at bay for the whole time, came back at full force and I stumbled on the carpet and fell squarely, with my face colliding with the floor.

"Who's there?" asked Lena, with a low, drowsy voice.

"It's me Cricket, go back to sleep sweetheart, I'm sorry I woke you." I said, rushing beside her bed and taking her outstretched hand in mine.

"What are you doing here? Why did you come through the window?"

How could I answer a question like that without telling the truth? Well, as a parent, you learn how to make up child-proof excuses in the span of a second.

"Because I was out and the front door was locked, I had to climb here. Don't worry Crickey, go back to sleep." I kissed her forehead and closed her eyes with my hand. "It's early for you."

"Mkay Daddy… Cuddle?" she murmured with her outstretched hands. How can you say no to a sleepy baby girl asking for some cuddles? You can't.

"Of course Lena. Scoot, come on." And I slipped inside her tiny bed. She had to climb on my chest so I could fit. It was really too small for me. Slowly, she got comfortable on my chest and laid my shoulder. She was hot against me, the warm summer night made her skin clammy with sweat, but I didn't care. I held her close to me, tightly, a hand gently stroking her long, blonde hair and felt her sag against me, completely relaxed, already falling back to sleep.

Just what I needed to forget what I had just witnessed. I needed to calm down a little and Lena was the best medicine. Her chubby hands gripped the hem of my t-shirt and held on that as if her life depended on that. Her pink PJs stuck to her skin like a second one, and I knew she was uncomfortable. Poor baby, it was hot in her room, and the closed door didn't allow the air to circulate in and out. It wasn't hot outside, the breeze was cool but not cold, and she shouldn't have to sleep in a room so warm. No wonder she was so cranky in the morning when she woke up, I doubted she could sleep well in such a hot room.

"Hold tight Cricket, let's see if we can find a way to make this room a little less warm."

I stood up, holding her splayed against my chest and trying not to wake her, and opened the door. A surge of cool air entered from the window following the current, but it wasn't enough yet. I had to come up with a better idea but I couldn't do anything until the next morning, but I knew Lennart's room was better in that sense, and sneaked in. "Hey Crickey, you don't mind sleeping with your brother, do you?"

She shook her head, more asleep than awake. "Nope…" she murmured.

"Good. Hey Len, scoot, you need to share your bed." Not even waking up, he did as I asked. "There you go, a big Skywalker wrap." I whispered when I laid her down beside Len. That room was definitely cooler and even if they had to share a bed, they surely would have felt better.

And I needed that distraction, even if it was to be short lived.

Because when I went outside, and the distraction was over with my kids already back to sleep and comfortable, the Force metaphorically punched me in the face with a big wave that washed over me and made me stumble so I had to lean on a nearby wall.

I was going to kill them, one way or another. Even if I had to make fun of them for the rest of their life, I swore to myself I was going to take revenge on them.

You know what made it even worse? The fact that they weren't so far away from the place where I had kissed Padmè the first time.

And where we did… things… Many things… many times…

Anyway, I was left there, leaning against the wall, trying to push away those foreign feelings that weren't mine and that I didn't want as memories. What the hell, seriously, it was frustrating because even if I had learned every technique the Jedi training offered to push away unwanted feelings but that was too strong. It was like being caught in the undertow and not finding anything to grab and save yourself. I wondered how every other Force Sensitive being in the house could sleep peacefully while there was a storm blowing off in the patio!

It was a huge whirlwind, and the drums in my head were pounding as loud as a… I don't know, it had been years since I had heard them so loud and it wasn't a pleasure. The rhythm was getting faster and faster by the minute, I needed to do something about it was fast as I could. What did that mean?

I needed some help, and there was only one person that could help me.

Padmè.

I stood up and rushed to our bedroom, a couple of doors ahead on the left. It was open, and I could see my wife happily asleep on her side, facing away from the door, towards the window. _Oh thank the Force for small __favors._ I thought to myself as I walked in and closed the door behind me, locking it for good measure.

The noise of the wooden panel colliding with my back when I fell back on it startled her and she woke with a start, jumped on the bed and turned to the door. The scared look on her face turned into a smile when she saw me. "Hey Anakin, found the right picture?"

I shook my head and unsteadily walked towards the bed. Seeing my unsure gait, I saw the worry grow in her eyes. "What happened?"

I shook my head again and fell on the mattress beside her, face first. "I got interrupted." I cringed, at the next incoming wave. She confused my sudden jerk for a sign of uneasiness.

"Migraine? I told you, it wasn't good to stay up all night to look at a computer screen!"

"Wasn't a migraine. It was Ferus…" she was about to speak up when I continued. "And Jane. I went outside since it was cool and after a while Jane came down and… she didn't see me but I could see her."

"Your usual hiding spot when you need to think or work on something tough?"

I nodded. "Exactly. Anyway, she's an insomniac, so I let her do whatever she wanted and didn't interrupt, went back to my job but then Ferus came and they started arguing again but it was different this time…"

"How different?" she asked, moving some rebel locks away from her face. "What do you mean?"

"They had a thing. I mean, they had a relationship, before he was accused of murdering five men, nine years ago."

"Oh…" she tried to mask her shock but she was indeed shocked. "I thought they hated each other!"

I shook my head. "Apparently, no. I don't know the whole story, but from what I picked up during my Force Eavesdropping…"

The way Padmè looked at me made me laugh. "Force Eavesdropping? What's that?"

"No idea, for real. I just know that at a certain point they lowered their voices and I could still hear them through the Force, right in my head. Anyway, they've been together for two years. Then they blew up. I don't know the details because then they started having sex on the balcony…"

"What?"

"It's not like it's something new, come on, we've had sex on that balcony how many times? Anyway, I climbed up here through the window in Lena's room and came here. By the way, I moved her in Len's room, hers is too hot, she couldn't sleep in there. I'm installing a fan on the ceiling tomorrow, she can't keep sleeping in there with the door closed."

"That's a great idea but why do you look so upset?"

I sighed and grabbed her hand, holding it tightly. "Because this _Force__Eavesdropping_ thing sort of backfired on me and I was able to experience their feelings and sensations for a while. It feels like cheating on you."

"Hey, it's not you that's having sex with Jane right now, no need to be worried about it."

"I know it's just that... I think the Force is telling me something. Like when I went looking for Jax."

"_We_ went looking for Jax." she corrected me.

"Yeah, sorry, we went looking for Jax. I waited weeks before I did anything and it turned out we nearly fell into a chasm. What if the Force is telling me that I have to act?"

Padmè shook her head and smiled. "And do what? Force them in a room with food and water until they settle their issues? You don't even know what issue we're talking about, because I really doubt it's only because of the infamous murder charge!"

"From what I heard, the real problem is that he didn't tell her he was working with the Alliance, passing them information and stuff. She took it as lack of trust from him, while she was completely sincere with him. I realize this can be a very big issue in a relationship."

She turned and looked at the ceiling, holding back a yawn. "Yes, I guess it can become a great obstacle to overcome. I wonder if she ever had trust issues before that."

"I don't really know, but it's late and you need to sleep. And so do I, before I lose it and go downstairs and lock them somewhere for real. Maybe if I sleep for some hours I'll manage to shake off this weird feeling..."

Throwing a sleepy nod at me, she outstretched her arm towards me. "Hey, come here, I know a way to make you sleep like a baby."

I shook my head but happily complied. "You've got a dirty mind Padmè."

"Oh believe me, I know." then with a strong push on my shoulder, she made me lay back on the mattress, and climbed on top of me. "Now, let's get rid of these clothes and lose it, what do you think?"

* * *

_Right__... __this __one__'__s __done __too__. __Now __off __to __write __the __second __chapter __of __All __We__'__ve __Been __Through __and __see __ya __soon __guys__. __At __least __I __hope__! _

_Love ya!_

_BTW, I was rewatching Mr And Mrs Smith and I realized I literally stole the beginning of the movie for Jane and Ferus! OMG! I almost couldn't believe it! Oh well... let's try to make it a little less gory and bloody than their story, right?_


End file.
